On The Edge

of forest, after fires, floods -

a sodden smoky grief.  I am

nowhere, everywhere,

on and off a narrowed path

beginning this new year a ghost 

without clan or map,

a stone over the well

refusing to be moved.

 

I cry when the story

is retold - the death of the teacher  

in the book of my imperfect people, 

his despair, his desire occupies

my heart, my bones.

I relive his murderous rage, 

surprising love, his willingness to exclude the voices

of his sisters, his mothers, to make prayer a dominion 

of the entitled.  I wait

with all of us in the margins

of the narrative, looking towards 

another land, protecting these scrolls

written with fire on sky, on skin,

in my body, pregnant

with my perennial questions: 

what will we do

what will I do

once again

with this possibility

of beginning?